Man on Fire by A. J. Quinnell

magazines.
    Her lively curiosity meant that Maria and Bruno were often asked questions.
    Neither of them was well-read or had traveled and their answers were limited. Creasy heard these conversations only as a background murmur but on this particular evening the name "Vietnam" caught his attention.
    Pinta had been reading about the mass exodus of refugees from the south-the boat people. She asked Bruno why so many were fleeing their own country.
    He shrugged and talked vaguely of Communism.
    Creasy's interest was stirred and for the first time he found himself drawn into the conversation. The girl listened with interest as he explained that the majority of the boat people were ethnic Chinese and had always lived as a separate community. They were not liked by the Vietnamese, who traditionally distrusted them.
    With the ending of the war, a united Vietnam decided to get rid of them. As a community the Chinese were wealthy and could afford to pay the middlemen, usually Hong Kong Chinese, to smuggle them out by boat. It didn't take much smuggling since the authorities turned a blind eye and even actively encouraged the departures. So it wasn't so much the effects of Communism that caused the problem but deep-seated racial differences.
    Pinta astutely drew a comparison with the migration of labor in Europe from poor countries to rich. She had read recently about the bad feelings Italian workers were facing in Switzerland and Germany.
    It was deftly done, and a follow-up question had Creasy explaining about the effects of minority Chinese communities in Malaysia and Indonesia, where they controlled most of the economy and again created resentment.
    He told her that over one hundred thousand Chinese had been slaughtered in Indonesia after the failure of a Communist coup.
    She wanted to know how the Chinese got there in the first place, and he told her of the great labor importing by the early colonial powers. The Chinese made good workers for the plantations, clearing jungle and building roads. The local populations were less inclined to work as hard. There were many examples, he told her: the Asians in East Africa who had been imported to build the railroads and who had stayed on to take over almost all the retailing and distributing networks, and the Tamils in Sri Lanka, imported from southern India to work the tea plantations. There were examples all over the world, and usually they created a rift that led to hatred and bloodshed in later years.
    Abruptly he stopped talking and picked up his book. It had been an uncharacteristic monologue. She didn't press him or say another word to him. Instead she started to talk to Maria. A few minutes later Creasy stood up, said a gruff good night, and went up to his room.
    As the door closed behind him, Pinta smiled inwardly.
    "The first step, Creasy bear," she said to herself.
    The next day on the way to school, and on the way back, Pinta didn't say a word, and after dinner that night she watched television. Creasy didn't exist. He was relieved. The night before, up in his room, he'd felt disturbed, a feeling he always got when he'd done something out of character. But if he had realized the girl's strategy, he would have been even more disturbed, although forced to admire it from a military point of view: Reconnoiter the target carefully. Note points of weakness. Make a diversionary attack to draw fire and then quietly slip in the back way and effect a capture. Pinta would have made an excellent guerrilla leader.
    Creasy took Elio and Felicia to dinner at Zagone's in Milan. Maria had recommended it. She had worked there as a waitress when she had first come north; the owner was from Florence and she vouched for the food, although-she explained apologetically-it was expensive.
    For Felicia it was an occasion. Having two young children kept her at home in the evenings, but tonight a trusted neighbor was baby-sitting and she was determined to enjoy herself.
    Maria had phoned for a